Either the revamp of Dunedin’s main shopping street is allowed to continue in the form approved in 2021 or significant construction work is suspended and a mid-project redesign is pursued.
One of these paths might add millions of dollars to the George St upgrade, but ensure a switch to one-way traffic can be reversed years down the track without great expense, if need be.
Dunedin Mayor Jules Radich will be weighing up whether the political risks of forcing "flexibility" into a reworked design are worth the costs and, if so, how this might be done.
Mr Radich has less room in which he can manoeuvre, compared with a week ago.
The mayor saw to it a report about how "flexibility can be incorporated into the remainder of the project" was brought to the Dunedin City Council’s infrastructure services committee meeting this week and there a better-articulated motion was voted down, 9-8.
It turns out what half of the councillors wanted was a report about alternative options to the approved design and this they did not get. Nor will they, after the 9-8 vote.
It looks like a political-management misstep happened there, because December’s vote that called for the staff report was 8-7 from a full council meeting and the two extra votes this week came from mana whenua representatives on the infrastructure committee.
On this interpretation, Mr Radich either over-estimated his powers of persuasion or he forgot to account for how mana whenua representatives might vote.
However, it must be conceded the committee was a logical landing point for the report.
The upshot is the denial of extra information about potential options is problematic to reverse.
If a group of councillors brings a notice of motion to a council meeting that is essentially the same as the motion just lost, this can only be read as a direct challenge to the legitimacy of mana whenua representatives having voting rights on committees.
Any attempt to get around what the committee decided would surely be perceived as insulting to mana whenua.
If most of the council still wants more information before jumping all-in on a redesign, the passage of time presents a problem. So does cost.
Infrastructure services committee chairman Cr Jim O’Malley seemed a little too strident at this week’s meeting, but he also made points of note.
One was embarking on a redesign would force a delay.
It emerged at the meeting the cost of standing down the contractor, Isaac Construction, would start at $75,000 a day and would then flatten off, and this was behind Cr O’Malley’s estimate the cost of delay would be between $2 million and $5 million.
He warned councillors minded to pursue redesign, "don’t ever come to me and say that you are fiscally responsible, because the fact of the matter is you are deliberately putting cost into a programme which the council has already agreed on and already costed".
Mr Radich made the observation a $5 million bill in the context of a central city plan budgeted at $100 million would be "relatively small".
Council major projects programme manager Josh von Pein cautioned any redesign would need to be done properly, otherwise they would "end up with a lot of rework, a lot of mistakes and some misaligned infrastructure".
Council staff confirmed iwi would have to be re-engaged in any redesign.
Perhaps the most striking thing about the committee meeting was eight people read a discouraging report about potential implications of a mid-project redesign and still apparently thought it could be a good idea.
If the council dares pursue redesign, the time for biting the bullet looms. This might mean copping penalty clauses for breaching a contract, suspending work, adding cost to the project, upsetting mana whenua and causing some political uproar.
It may well future-proof the project, as some councillors like to say.
Or compromise it.
